6582 Results for “production”
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Outrage, Morvern Callar, Man on the Moon: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
In the 1940s, actress Ida Lupino was one of Warner Bros.’ most reliable contract players, a performer who exuded a tough intelligence in terse genre movies like High Sierra and They Drive by Night. As independent-minded as her characters, Lupino irritated the front office with her refusal to accept sub-par roles and was eventually fired, a development that might not have been great for her bank account but which instigated her most fertile period as an artist. Instead of waiting for the phone to ring, Lupino formed an independent production company and began directing her own pictures, some of which […]
by Jim Hemphill on Feb 18, 2022 -
Via Chicago: Daniel Hymanson on His Documentary Debut So Late So Soon
Simultaneously a gentle portrait of two aging artists and an appreciative look at a bickering but loving couple, Daniel Hymanson’s debut feature, So Late So Soon, benefits from a level of access most documentarians would crave. Having known Chicago-based artists and educators Jackie and Don Seiden since he was a young boy, Hymanson sets himself and his camera inside the Seidens’s multi-storied, eye-catching home. Known locally as the Candyland House, the Barbie House and the Rainbow Cone Home, this Rogers Park residence has been occupied by the Seidens for close to 50 years, its interiors and exteriors closely resembling the […]
by Erik Luers on Feb 18, 2022 -
“… A Person Deprived of a Legal Status is Further Denied a Voice and an Image”: Philip Scheffner and Merle Kröger on their Berlinale-Debuting Europe
World-premiering in the Forum section (February 13) at this year’s Berlinale, Philip Scheffner’s Europe is a work at once as simple and complex as its title might imply. “Europe” is the name of a bus stop in Europe (specifically in the small French town of Chatellerault) where the main character Zohra, an Algerian citizen, catches a ride from her housing block flat to her job sorting secondhand clothes at an NGO-run warehouse and also to various doctor and physical therapy appointments – her reason for coming to France in the first place. Fortunately, the numerous surgeries and treatments for her debilitating scoliosis […]
by Lauren Wissot on Feb 14, 2022 -
Stage Fright, Escape from L.A. and Marc Allégret Films on OVID: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
From its opening shot of a curtain rising on a London cityscape to its climactic revelation that an earlier flashback sequence was a lie, Stage Fright (1950) is one of director Alfred Hitchcock’s most intriguing and playful investigations into the cinema’s power to deceive and manipulate. After Stage Fright received mixed reviews and collected lackluster returns at the box office, Hitchcock regretted tricking the audience with the unreliable narrator of the film’s controversial flashback, but I think the bold audacity of that device is actually one of the greatest strengths of a movie that has many, from the cleverly designed […]
by Jim Hemphill on Feb 12, 2022 -
“I Believe that School Defines Who We Become as Adults”: Director Laura Wandel on Her Astonishing School Bullying Drama, Playground
Opening today at New York’s Film Forum before, next week, rolling out to additional theaters across the country, is Laura Wandel’s Playground, an astonishingly immersive and nuanced drama that plunges the viewer into the complex childhood dynamics of school bullying. It’s Wandel’s debut following well-received shorts, and the film’s seeming simplicity belies a pre-production that had to be handled with incredible sensitivity. (As we discuss below, Wandel worked extensively with her young lead, using devices such as finger puppets to walk her through the emotional arc of her character as well make clear to her the “make believe” element of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 11, 2022 -
“We Joke About it, But I Get Very Anxious When Guys Get Hurt”: Set Medic Eloy Lara on Jackass Forever
By the time of the new Jackass Forever, some of the series’s performers have neared or surpassed age 50. Their bodies remain sturdy, if marked by 20 years of unnatural trials. To extend their infamous game of indecent brinkmanship, the crew has endured a brand-new omnibus of freak obstacles and some reimaginings of past favorites. Beekeepers use a queen bee to attract a hive to Steve-O’s (47) phallus; Danger Ehren (45) sustains countless blows to the groin in an exhaustive series of “Cup tests”; Johnny Knoxville (50) re-contends with a particularly mean bull in a ring; series newcomers (“Poopies,” “Jasper,” […]
by A.E. Hunt on Feb 9, 2022 -
“Often We are Communicating Without Words”: DP Daniele Massaccesi on The Matrix Resurrections
After more than 25 years of making movies alongside her sister, Lana Wachowski’s first solo feature revisits the siblings’ most famed creation with a new installment of The Matrix, The Matrix Resurrections. Daniele Massaccesi knows something about making movies with family. The Matrix Resurrections co-cinematographer grew up on the sets of his father, Aristide Massaccesi, a cult figure in the 1970s and 1980s Italian exploitation era who often worked under the pseudonym Joe D’Amato. Daniele Massaccesi eventually graduated from lugging batteries and lens cases on his dad’s Italian Mad Max and Conan the Barbarian variations to become a sought-after Steadicam […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Feb 8, 2022 -
Watch: DuArt: History of Independent Film
With the recent passing of DuArt Film Laboratories Chairman Irwin Young, we’re posting this video kindly flagged to us by David Leitner, whose one of those on-screen detailing the history of DuArt — everything from its role as a technical innovator to the support it gave to the New York independent community. A panel discussion hosted by the Post New York Alliance in December, 2021, the video features in addition to Leitner former DuArt employees Dominic Rom (Goldcrest), Tim Spitzer (Jigsaw Productions), Bob Mastronardi (Kodak) and Jane Tolmachyov (Goldcrest). A bonus is a short video at the end about Young […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 4, 2022 -
Remembering DuArt Film Laboratories Chairman Irwin Young
Irwin Young, a foundational figure in the New York independent film world, died January 20, in Manhattan, at the age of 94. Chairman of DuArt Film Laboratories, his contributions across the field, which range from technical and business innovations to philanthropy to, simply, extending support to new and emerging filmmakers, are embedded within so many films that now define the American independent film movement. As distributor and director Ira Deutchman wrote at Indiewire, “If there were a Guinness Book of World Records entry for most ‘thank you’ credits at the end of films, I can’t imagine that anyone else could […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 4, 2022 -
I Wouldn’t Be In Your Shoes!, The Gift and 1408: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
Walter Mirisch is best remembered today as the producer of studio prestige releases like In the Heat of the Night, The Apartment, and the original West Side Story, but before he became one of Hollywood’s most reliable sources of “A” pictures he toiled away in the “B” trenches of Poverty Row company Monogram. He kept the studio in the black with his Bomba the Jungle Boy series, but before establishing that franchise he produced a pair of noir movies based on material by Cornell Woolrich, the suspense writer who would hit paydirt with Hitchcock’s Rear Window. Mirisch’s first solo Monogram […]
by Jim Hemphill on Feb 4, 2022
